Ashley is 5 times as old as Tiffany and is also 32 years older than Tiffany. How old is Ashley?
Solution: We can use the given information to write down two equations that describe the ages of Ashley and Tiffany. Let Ashley's current age be $a$ and Tiffany's current age be $t$ $a = 5t$ $a = t + 32$ Now we have two independent equations, and we can solve for our two unknowns. One way to solve for $a$ is to solve the second equation for $t$ and substitute that value into the first equation. Solving our second equation for $t$ , we get: $t = a - 32$ . Substituting this into our first equation, we get the equation: $a = 5$ $(a - 32)$ which combines the information about $a$ from both of our original equations. Simplifying the right side of this equation, we get: $a = 5a - 160$ Solving for $a$ , we get: $4 a = 160$ $a = 40$.